This month I have been trying to get you in a new state of mind. I’ve talked about new markets, new resumes, new cover letters, new targets, and new networking strategies. For the last post in January, let’s focus on the new interviews.

If you have a good resume and cover letter and you use those with effective networking, I can almost guarantee you’ll get interviews. These techniques will raise you above the average job seeker and give you the visibility you need to be noticed. Then, it will be up to you to use your interviewing skills to move to the next stage.

If you click on Interviewing in the Tag Cloud to the right of this post, you’ll find seven previous posts on interviewing. One of my favorites is Becoming Scheherazade… from just over a year ago. Each of the posts provides some insight in how to make your interviews more successful, but for you impatient ones…

Be prepared – go online and find lists of the interview questions. Then write out your answers to those questions. Then practice saying those answers aloud. Be prepared to answer behaviorally based questions (back to Scheherazade).

Know who you are and what you want – spend some time (before the interview) really thinking about what you want out of your next job and what you can give. This will drive your elevator speech (last week) but it will also let you answer those questions about your strengths and weaknesses.

Get off on the right foot – be on time, well dressed and groomed, look the interviewer in the eye, offer a firm handshake, etc. You need to make a good first impression.

Answer the questions you’re asked – don’t talk about unrelated subjects, don’t volunteer information they don’t need to know, don’t vent about how your former employer fired you or about how bad your old boss was at managing.

Ask questions – use your opportunity to ask questions to show what you know about this company (things you learned while developing your target list, networking, or through research). Asking questions shows that you are interested and want to learn more. Asking intelligent questions really gets the interviewer’s attention.

Losing one a job and finding another can be a challenging, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding process. For the most part the techniques are not rocket-science, but for many they are not common sense either. I hope that these new posts in January have given you the foundation to understand the process and be successful.

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If you want more advice on how to write a resume, how to, network or just how to find a job, check out I’m Fired?!? A Business Fable about the Challenges of Losing One Job and Finding Another. Click here for more details.

It’s a new year and you are hitting the networking scene. You are cleaned up, you’re carrying some copies of your freshly updated resume, you’re set – right? Have you thought about what you’re going to say? You need to have a great elevator speech – a 30-second summary of who you are, what you do, and what you want. Nancy Collamer does a fantastic job of describing how to develop your elevator speech in this blog post.

Then, when you think you’re ready, I want to watch this Ted Talk by Amy Cuddy. If you’ve seen this before, watch it again. The power of body language is incredible and should not be ignored.

You have a story to tell, and you have skills to offer a new employer. The information in these three sources will help put you in a position so you can use those skills. Your elevator speech, your body language, and your first impression will open doors. If you neglect these three items you may have a long a challenging job search.

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If you want more advice on how to write a resume, how to, network or just how to find a job, check out I’m Fired?!? A Business Fable about the Challenges of Losing One Job and Finding Another. Click here for more details.

In this digital world in which we live, this adage has never been more true. This phrase was first written in 1918 about a pictorial magazine about World War I. At that time, no one could have conceived the number of images we are bombarded with every day. Managing your image is important for the job seeker. The right image, or the wrong one, can tell a recruiter all that s/he wants to know.

There are places you where you absolutely must have a picture of you, and some places where you probably shouldn’t. Here are three suggestions:

Resume – NO – Do not put your photograph on your resume unless you are applying to be a model, a performer, or some other position where you will be hired based on your looks. I like to talk about enablers and limiters on your resume, and photos are almost always limiters. Rarely will all but the most stunning photo improve your chance of getting an interview, and often a poor quality photo can land your resume on the reject pile.

LinkedIn – YES – you should have a good quality professional looking photo on your LinkedIn profile. A lack of a photo suggests (at least to me) that you don’t follow through on things. It appears that you set up a LinkedIn profile because someone (like me) told me you needed one, but you didn’t finish the process. Keep in mind, LinkedIn is a professional networking site. It is not Facebook. Your LinkedIn photo should be a head and shoulders picture in professional attire with a pleasant smile. You want to covey professionalism. Put those other photos on Facebook.

Facebook – YES and NO – If you are going to have a Facebook account, you need to make a decision; is it public or private? If you leave your site unrestricted, you need to realize that many companies will look for you on Facebook to learn more about you. Pictures of you in “unprofessional” situations, drinking, smoking, or what-have-you, might be fine for your friends, but is this how you want your future boss to see you? Assume anything you post on an unrestricted Facebook page is the same as posting that same image on your resume. I suggest you lock down your account to just friends, or you make sure to keep your page Sunday-School appropriate.

Yes, one picture can be worth 1,000 words. As a job seeker, make sure those 1,000 words say “here’s why you should hire me.”

For more details about I’m Fired?!? A Business Fable about the Challenges of Losing One Job and Finding Another, click here.

In my quiet time, I worry about odd things, and one of those is that the English language may lose three important words due to lack of use. Unfortunately, these are words that we all know, and could, and should, use them every day; but somehow we’ve stopped. Those words? “Please” and “you’re welcome.” (Okay – one of those words is really two words, but give me some literary license, please.

Let’s take these on one at a time. I’ll bet that when you were a toddler, your parents told you multiple times every day to say please and thank you. Somewhere around the teenage years you probably started dropping the please – and maybe the thank you. As I interact with business professionals all day, many of them make requests of me. They ask for information, for assistance, to be hired for a job, etc. I could probably count on one hand the number of times someone included “please” in that request so far this month. While please may still be common for toddlers, it seems to be slipping from the business vernacular.

As a side-note, “thank you” is not endangered – at least not from usage. I hear “thank you” and “thanks” all day long. Granted, some of them are perfunctory or insincere, but the word lives on. I am concerned that all too often its use is insincere. What bothers me most is when someone writes or types “Thx.” Really? You want to show your appreciation, but you don’t have enough time to use three more letters? And how about saying the full “thank you” once in a while? Wouldn’t that be nice to hear?

The first word/phrase I think we might lose is “you’re welcome.” I rarely hear this anymore. Instead I hear no problem, okay, no biggie, any time, and other phrases that suggest that whatever I did for you was insignificant and not worthy of being thanked. In my mind that is plain rude. If someone is going to tell you they appreciate what you’ve done for them – presuming that appreciation is sincere – then the least you can do is acknowledge the receipt of that appreciation by saying “you’re welcome.”

So, the purpose of this manners rant? I wrote a post a while back about the importance of making a good first impression. You can enhance and sustain that impression by being polite. When you ask for an interview, say please. When you get that interview, say thank you. When the interviewer says, “Thanks for coming in today,” say, “You’re welcome, and thank you for the opportunity.”

Incorporating all three words/phrases into your everyday conversations will not only improve the quality of your relationships, you’ll also be saving these words from extinction. Thank you.

For more details about I’m Fired?!? A Business Fable about the Challenges of Losing One Job and Finding Another, click here.

I will bet that when you were very young your mother told you more than once, “You only have one chance to make a first impression – don’t blow it.” She was right, but she probably didn’t know how right she was.

Some fairly recent neuroscience has confirmed that we make first impressions within milliseconds and those impressions are hard to change. Think about it. As our ancestors were living in caves and struggling for survival every day, they didn’t have time to interview every new person they met to decide if they should fight or flee. They developed the mental processes to immediately assess if this was a person they liked or disliked so they could react and keep their family safe. We have come a long way since then, but we still have much of that caveman brain.

When you meet a new person, the way that they perceive you in the first few seconds will have a huge impact on their impressions of you. It is even true on the telephone. Scientists have found that just by how you say hello tells the caller a lot about you including your trustworthiness.

Now get ready – this is going to sound like your mother again. When you go for an interview make sure you are neat, clean, well groomed and appropriately dressed. Stand up straight, put your shoulders back and a smile on your face, look them in the eye, say hello in a clear, confident voice and offer them a firm handshake. If you can do those things, the rest of the interview will go well. If you are rumpled, smell bad, look at the ground, mumble a greeting and offer a limp handshake, then pack up your resume and head for the door.

Sound harsh? Maybe – but its life. Self-confidence gets jobs. Lack of confidence gets unemployment. You must believe in yourself. You need to know what you can do and be ready, willing and able to tell others about it. That takes preparation and practice. Get yourself ready. Write out answers to questions and practice saying them out loud. Work on your elevator speech until it rolls off your tongue. Have close friends help you examine your look, your wardrobe, your handshake. Practice your diction and learn to speak clearly. Go to networking events just to practice meeting people and making a first impression. Practice until it is who you are – because it is who you are, you’ve just been hiding behind a lack of confidence.

Regardless of your circumstances, skills, formal training, what-have-you, you can be confident that you are unique. You are a person of value and a child of God. You have worth, you can contribute, you can learn and you can be a positive force for good in your community. You may or may not be ready to be the next CEO, but you can be successful in whatever job you are applying for. If you believe it, they will too.

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